Mr. Patterson has his own issues with Bay Area cuisine, but that doesn’t mean he is captain of New York’s cheerleading squad. “New Yorkers’ love affair with tuna tartare has inexplicably entered its third decade,” he writes. “Every dish seems to have bacon in it. Comfort foods (hellooo, pizza!) continue their inexorable march through the Manhattan dining scene. And what’s with the all the ‘gourmet’ fried chicken? New York chefs may make fun of Californians, but they’re using all of our produce (several days later), and the latest trend seems to be ‘farm to table’ restaurants. I feel like I’ve seen that before. Somewhere.”

As for the restaurants where he lives: “Say what you will about creativity,” Mr. Patterson writes, “but our food tastes really, really good.” Largely because immigrant farmers from around the world settled in the Bay Area, he continues, “at farmers’ markets today I can find 8 kinds of cucumbers and 10 varieties of potatoes.” Even after visiting Italy, he found that “with few exceptions, the products were better, the cooking more careful in my hometown.”